


in many forms

by shortitude



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season 2 Finale Feels, Skoulson RomFest 2k15 REDUX, Spoilers (if this even applies anymore), WARNING: includes the bad pun team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 08:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4384244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loss comes in many forms. Recovery is not inmediate, though they try their best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in many forms

**Author's Note:**

> prompts used: ‘I lost her’, junk food, ghost pain, Inhuman biology (4/5, I'd give myself a high-five but...)

Afterwards, she picks herself up from the ground, rubs her scraped and bruised hands against her jeans and helps her father carry the corpse of her mother back inside. They are silent and solemn in their journey, perhaps this being the first time Cal hasn’t felt the need to fill the awkward silences with humour (does she get that from him, too?). They run into May and Lincoln first, both of them wearing expressions worth a million words; this is what the Johnson family has been reduced to. 

Lincoln hesitates before rushing to their aid, but May is there to understand without the need for words. Skye’s heart clenches at the sight of them both; Lincoln, who fought with them even though it pitched him against his people, and May, who fought side by side with Inhumans even though it brought back all her trauma. She’s fiercely proud of both of them, fiercely protective; whatever happens next – and god, she doesn’t know what’s going to happen next; what comes after your mother tries to kill you for life juice, what comes after you watch your dad kill her? – she needs to make sure she doesn’t allow the people who stood by her, with her, be unhappy. 

When her knees buckle out from under her, it’s May who’s there to catch her, one arm under her shoulder. She feels weak, like all of Jiaying’s efforts have come back with a vengeance and she’s hanging on to the last sliver of energy she’s got left. 

She hears Cal in the background, telling May it’s “just a drop in her sugar levels,” and Lincoln add that it’s “an Inhuman thing,” and thankfully, May does not freeze with Skye in her arms. She does feel woozy, however, whether by genetic design or because of the suggestion itself; woozy and loopy, because she lets her head drop on May’s shoulder with a little grin. 

“You should take a vacation,” she mumbles. 

“Let’s get you to Simmons,” is May’s stoic reply. She reaches past Skye, and Skye has to watch how May pries her fingers away from where they are, still grabbing onto Jiaying’s hand. She feels it like an out-of-body experience, and perhaps it’s for the best; later, she will think back on how she still held on to the hope of a mother after all.

Now, she just smiles once her hand is free and May starts walking them away from the guys. “Somewhere sunny. Wear a bikini.” She pauses, squints – scratch that, _very woozy_ \- “ _Do_ you own a bikini?” 

“Skye.”

This hallway she recognizes; down this hallway, she chased her mom with the morbid knowledge that she’d have to put her down. Oh, she hadn’t been entirely wrong. 

Before her throat closes up, before she feels the loss as if she’s just lost a limb, she manages to croak out “What about everyone else?” Since there still is _that_ fearful possibility. (She knows Simmons is okay, because that’s where they’re headed, but everyone else; everyone else is on her. Her fault.)

“About that…”

\---

She has to hand it to the guy who broke the rules about no junk food on board the ship, because they had good taste in chocolate.

It has been two hours since the end of the war (she’ll call it a war, because it’s what it felt like; she’ll call it the end, even though inside she’s still warring herself), and her sugar levels are finally getting back to normal, but it has definitely taken more than five chocolate bars. The big kind. 

She’s sober enough that the others are giving her a wide berth, given that by now May’s briefed everyone on what happened. There’s also the fact that she’s chosen a privileged spot, one where nobody but Simmons is likely to barge into. 

The machines are beeping rhythmically, an indication that all is well and he’ll be _fine_ , and stop panicking, Skye. It’s been fifteen minutes since the doctors brought Coulson back in from surgery. She keeps looking at his left arm like she’s personally responsible for it, and chooses to believe that the emptiness in her stomach is due to that. (It’s in no means got anything to do with the fear of losing him, too.) 

She is chewing through a big mouthful of chocolate when he opens his eyes; typical, of course they can’t catch a break now. Those eyes finally _look_ at her, both of them in the same room with nothing exploding in the distance, and Skye knows what’s going to happen before it does. She forces herself to swallow the chocolate before it does, quickly.

“ _Skye_ ,” he whispers, and she bursts into tears. 

Two seconds later, she is hugging him, carefully at first and then hard when he doesn’t wince in pain. Coulson hugs her right back, unflinching. 

There are, as usual, so many things she wishes she could tell him about. That she knows what happened in Afterlife now, and she can’t help but think what she’d have done if it had been _him_ , and not Gonzalez. That she hasn’t left his bedside since they brought him in and she doesn’t intend to and thank god he’s okay because she won’t lose him. So many things. In the end, what comes out is the one that aches the most. 

“I lost her,” she sobs, ugly tears seeping into Coulson’s thin hospital dress. 

His right arm shifts from her back to the nape of her neck, comforting and warm, and Skye sucks in air that hurts on the way down. 

“I just wanted – just this once – “ A mother who would love her until they both grew old enough to annoy each other with their idiosyncrasies, a mother who would be _good_ and not leave her; a mother. A father. That family she’s never stopped searching for, even with SHIELD there on her side. 

He tries to move his left arm; she feels it, the exact moment he freezes up and _realizes_ , and she feels like a selfish fool for not thinking about that. She pulls back right away, rubbing at her eyes and not catching the way his expression falls at the distance. “I’m so glad you’re alive,” she mumbles finally, and reaches out to touch his left elbow, ever so gingerly. “So, so glad.” 

His eyes say everything his mouth can’t right now, and for Skye that’s enough. “You heard,” he finally croaks out, and Skye realizes these are the second and third words out of his mouth since surgery. 

“About you catching the crystals like some goddamn superhero? _Yeah_ , it’s a pretty big deal on the base right now.” 

Coulson tries to shrug to dispel the gloom; fails, because he flinches. Still, pale lips lift up in a small smirk, “I was wrong.” He speaks with pauses, an after-effect of the drugs and painkillers. “Thought I’d be safe.” Yeah, Skye thinks; what a moment for that alien blood to fail miserably. (It could’ve been so much worse.) “Guess they weren’t so armless.” 

“Shit—“ The laugh-sob that gets ripped out of her, through shock and surprise, sounds pathetic and ugly. But he lets out a similar one. _How is he the Director?_ Mirth doesn’t keep away the tears from coming back, but it’s not as bad as it could be. “That was terrible.”

“What, no high-five?” 

She can’t possibly love him more than she does right now. Eventually, she thinks, she’ll tell him this. Not now. She thinks that they have more things to talk about until then. (What will happen to Cal. What happened to Bobbi, who she hasn’t seen on the ship so far. What they’re going to do with the Inhumans who turned to their side, and with the ones who didn’t.) 

But he’s just come out of surgery and woken up to having lost one arm, and she – her mother – 

So, not now. 

Instead, she reaches behind her on the chair. "I don't know if it's allowed, but hey - do you want some chocolate?”

(It isn't allowed. He eats some anyway.)


End file.
